by Emma Morgan
‘Are you going on a round the world trip?’ said Linden.
‘Can we come?’ said Rowan.
‘What? Why?’ said Bella.
‘Oh no, you haven’t,’ said Grace, ‘please tell me you haven’t!’
‘Yes,’ said Eustacia, ‘I have. There was nothing else for it. At least for a while, until, you know, well, you know.’
‘You are completely and utterly insane,’ said Grace.
‘What the fuck is going on?’ said Bella.
‘I’m moving back to Ravel Corner. With Jeremy obviously. Next week.’
Nobody said anything for a while, not even the twins.
‘Anyone else want to comment?’ said Bella. ‘Because I agree with Grace, you’ve gone completely round the twist. Why would you want to do that?’
‘Who else is going to look after them?’ said Eustacia firmly.
Tess was considering her carefully.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that is a very noble and brave decision and I wholly condone it. After all, Eustacia’s job, unlike ours, is portable. And Jeremy is going to retire early. It seems sensible to me.’
‘Thank you,’ said Eustacia. ‘Bella, I understand your objection, I do, but we’ve made up our minds. And I had suggested that Grace and, well, that Grace come with me if she wants to.’
‘And she said no? Well done, Grace, at least someone in this family is sane,’ said Bella. ‘Apart from any of the other million objections, what on earth would you expect Grace to do with her time up there?’
‘I’ve thought about that,’ said Eustacia. ‘If she wanted to, she could work online or even over the phone. I’ve researched it.’
‘I am here,’ said Grace. ‘I am sat right here in front of you.’
‘And then Grace, perhaps you could, if you wanted to … we would help you.’
‘This is an interesting conversation, for once,’ said Rowan.
‘It’s not bad,’ said Linden.
‘I could what?’ said Grace.
‘I know you think I don’t know, but I do.’
‘Know what?’ said Rowan and Bella simultaneously.
‘You won’t have to do it on your own.’
This is Annie and this is Violet
Annie, having reverse parked the Jag carefully on the kerb outside, opened the door of her flat with a sigh. It had been a long day, and she badly needed a gin and tonic. She hoped she had some lemons. Violet was standing in the living room with her hands behind her back.
‘I’m sorry, Annie,’ she said, ‘please forgive me,’ and she held out a bunch of yellow roses. ‘I know they’re your favourites.’
Annie went up to Violet and hugged her hard, which surprised Violet so much that she nearly toppled over and dropped the flowers. Annie was not the instigator of hugs, she was the reluctant huggee. Those were the rules.
‘Thank you,’ said Annie, taking the flowers. ‘I’m so glad you’re back. Are you back? Because I’ve been a right cow and I’ve been worried you’ll leave and move in with that bitch.’
‘Oh that,’ said Violet, ‘that’s over.’
‘Because you’re so much better than that woman,’ said Annie. ‘You could do so much better, you know you could. It doesn’t matter who you want to sleep with or what you are but couldn’t you pick someone decent? Did you say “over”?’
‘Completely over.’
‘Thank God,’ said Annie. ‘Did she break up with you? Because I can go round there and give her a piece of my mind if you want.’
Violet laughed.
‘No, I broke up with her.’
‘Well, I never,’ said Annie.
‘She wasn’t on my list, you see. Lichen was on there. Ryoichi Kurokawa installations were on there. But not her. At first, I thought I’d made a mistake and so I read it again and again and she wasn’t on it. And the more I thought about it the more I realized something. That she’s a nice enough person, although I know you don’t think that obviously, but she’s just been a distraction so that I don’t have to think about everything else that’s actually wrong with my life.’
‘Well, I could have told you that much ages ago! What did you say to her?’
‘I said, “I don’t want to go out with you any more, Sam, because you’re not on my list.” ’
‘What bloody list? And you’re not upset?’
‘I went to see my dad. He’s dying. It put things in perspective.’
‘You what? Where?’
‘In France.’
‘You went to France by yourself?’
‘Are you proud of me?’
‘I certainly am. I took Laurence’s Jag.’
‘Brilliant! Any particular reason why?’
‘It’s a long story. You saw your dad!’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’ve been going to therapy. I don’t want to have children. Well, not right now.’
‘Stop one-upping me! I’ve decided to go to the doctor, I think I’m depressed.’
‘Do you want to see a video of my twenty-year-old mother online singing Patsy Cline?’
‘I’ve got three half-brothers in France!’
‘I kneed Laurence in the bollocks!’
‘And you’ve won!’ Violet hugged Annie again. ‘I’ve got something I really need to show you in my room.’
This is Grace
Grace drove into her street and parked. As she got out of her car she saw Dolores walking her pugnacious Yorkshire terrier, the one that thought it was a bull terrier and attacked dogs many times its size. It growled at Grace.
‘Grace,’ she said. ‘Where have you been, my girl?’
‘To see my family.’
‘Good. Good. The family is important. That girl Sam was outside your house just now. She asked if I had seen you and I said no, I never see you, and it is a terrible pity. It is a terrible pity, come to my home. Come now. I have chorizo. I thought that you had broken up with her?’
‘Sam? When?’
‘Just now.’
But Grace was already running away.
‘Chorizo!’ Dolores shouted after her.
As Grace turned the corner she saw Sam’s back. She was moving in that way that people in Leeds do when they are head down into the wind going up a hill.
‘Sam!’ she called. Sam turned around. She smiled and came back towards Grace.
‘Grace, I was looking for you. But you didn’t answer your door.’
They stood two feet away from each other. What is the protocol? thought Grace. Shake hands? Kiss on the cheek? Spit?
‘I’ve been away,’ said Grace. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I wondered if you wanted to go out for a drink.’
‘What?’
‘We can go wherever you like.’
‘But you said …’
‘What did I say?’
‘That you never go back on yourself.’
‘It’s only a drink, Grace.’
‘But why?’
‘I missed you.’
Grace looked at Sam. She was smiling her beautiful smile and there was a moment when the sun came out overhead and illuminated her and she turned her face up to it and yet Grace thought, no. No. I will not. If she had been a child, she would have stamped her foot. Sam looked cold, her jacket was too thin for the day, and Grace thought no, I’m not going to offer you my coat. Or lay my head down in that puddle at your feet. I’m not going to invite you in for a cup of tea that may or may not lead to something further. I am going to give you nothing.
‘No,’ said Grace.
‘No for today? Because I could make tomorrow after work.’
‘No. I don’t want to go for a drink. Thank you.’
‘OK,’ said Sam, still smiling, looking like she didn’t believe a word that Grace was saying. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ said Grace.
‘Come out for a drink,’ said Sam. ‘We can go to that pub you like.’
‘No,’ said Grace.
&nbs
p; ‘Why not?’
‘Because you are a horrible person and I want nothing more to do with you.’
She turned her back on Sam and went back down the street quickly and it felt like her heart was missing, like it had been scooped out of her chest with an ice-cream scoop and dumped on the ground. She forced herself not to turn around. She opened the front door of her house and went inside. As she looked up the stairs she imagined, as she always did when she came into the house now, Sam sitting halfway up them, book in hand, and the way she would look up and smile when Grace stood at the bottom. The days and days that she herself had sat on the very same step and cried so much that she had left a wet patch on the wallpaper where she had leant against it. She bolted the door and walked up the stairs and sat on what she thought of as ‘Sam’s step’. Next to her she could still see the watermark.
What was that thing called, Grace thought, where you think about what you wanted to say before and are annoyed that you didn’t say it? Well, I said it. And instead of feeling guilty about this, she felt better. She had told the truth. She didn’t want to be with someone like Sam. No, she wanted a nice girlfriend who didn’t cheat on her and leave her an emotional wreck. She wanted to be able to sleep properly at night and get on with her life. I can be different, she thought, if I want to. I stood up to Sam just now, I don’t have to be such a walkover in the future. I don’t have to be stepped on by someone who doesn’t care about me. She thought about all the clients she had had who spent years bemoaning the one who got away even though the one who got away had been a monster. I don’t want to be like them, she thought. It was naïve to put all my expectations on one person, to want commitment so badly from someone who very obviously didn’t want the same thing. I was stupid. So what do I want? She pattered her fingers on her knees. She wondered if Sam would come and knock on the door and what she would do if she did. She knew what she would do – not let her in. Sam was the big bad wolf and she had behaved like an easily led to destruction Red Riding Hood. But not any more. She, she realized, wasn’t even that interested in thinking about what Sam might be doing now. What she was interested in, ever since Eustacia had said something this lunchtime, was how it was that Eustacia knew the one thing she had never told anybody? The one thing she wanted more than anything, more even than she had wanted to fall in love. She had secretly hoped that Sam would be a part of it but she had picked the most unsuitable person she could find. Perhaps she had done it on purpose to sabotage herself. Because she thought it was impossible. But what if it could be easy? A family was anything that you wanted it to be, she should be the first to acknowledge that. She was thirty-two, it wasn’t that old. She had some money. And she could rent out her house like Eustacia had done and that would give her more. What if I could? she thought and then, what’s to stop me? Let Sam go off on her own messed-up path trailing destroyed women in her wake, Grace decided then and there, I will go the way I want to go, and I will start right now. She went downstairs and into the back room and found her laptop and switched it on. And then she went on to one of the websites that she never told anybody she looked at, the ones where you could buy exactly what you lacked from a fairytale prince of your very own.
This is Violet and this is Annie
‘Well,’ said Annie, ‘far be it from me to comment.’
‘Is that all you’re going to say?’
‘I told you that you could do what you liked with your room.’
‘No, you told me, quite forcefully and on many occasions, to keep it in my room.’
‘And you’ve done that.’
‘I have, yes. You’re being very calm, Annie. Look, I’ve even got some on the carpet.’
Annie shrugged.
‘I don’t care. I like it, what you’ve done. I always thought you could be an artist. If you concentrated enough.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry I never told you that you’re any good before. I should have.’
‘Because I had this idea, I know it’s probably daft, probably really daft.’
‘What?’
‘What if I applied to art college? My dad has given me some money. And I could get a loan too. I mean, I have no idea if they’d take me and I’d have to get a portfolio together.’
‘Well, you’re not chipping down parts of the wall to take them to an interview, I can tell you that much now. I think it’s a great idea. Do it.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Exactly like that.’
‘What’s happened to you? Have you been taken over by aliens? You don’t like it if I leave toothpaste on the sink, let alone this mess.’
‘Well, I’ve messed up too, haven’t I? I thought you were going to move out and I didn’t seem to be able to stop it. And I had a towering row with my mum about kids and I lent Laurence twenty grand, if you can believe that, and then there’s something else.’
‘Wow! So what else? Is it a bad thing?’
‘No, a good one.’
‘Go on then.’
‘I got headhunted. It’s an amazing job. I get to travel all over the place.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘It’d be based in Dubai.’
‘That would be really cool.’
‘Did you not hear me? I said “Dubai”.’
‘And I said “really cool” like I was about eight and not twenty-eight, but never mind. Have you taken the job then?’
‘I told them no.’
‘Why?’
‘I thought because of my mum. Because of what she expects of me. But I’m past that now, I reckon. And then there was Laurence but it turns out he was a complete waste of my time. Not to mention my money. To be honest it was mostly because of you. Because I’m worried about you. About you being depressed. I can’t leave you here on your own, can I?’
‘Because I can’t look after myself?’
‘Basically yes.’
‘Say what you mean.’
‘Yes.’
‘Annie,’ said Violet. ‘I’m going to be fine. Would you sell the flat if you went?’
‘No, I wouldn’t do that, it’s a good investment.’
‘Then maybe I could stay here and if you wanted to you could rent out the other room to cover the mortgage. And I’d pay my way properly.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘It does. I’ll work part-time in the shop as well as maybe going to college. And I’ll go to the doctor, I promise I will.’
‘It’s too much pressure on you.’
Violet went and held Annie’s arms.
‘I’m a big girl. I can look after myself.’
‘No, you’re not. You’re tiny.’
‘I’ll wear heels. I know you think I can’t do it, but I can. I can, for once in my life, learn to look after myself. I don’t want to be a princess trapped in a castle any more.’
‘Often I have no idea what you’re on about.’
‘Do you want to go?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
‘Then let’s go and see if Manfred has an undiscovered bottle of champagne and toast your new job.’
‘Are you sure? Absolutely sure?’
‘Yes,’ said Violet. ‘Annie, I love you and I want you to be happy and if that’s what will make you happy then I want you to go.’
Annie looked at her with great concentration and said, ‘I love you too, Violet. Champagne it is then.’
‘Champagne it is.’
This is Gabriel Marshall Eppington
Gabriel could hear Aunt Eustacia hoovering and this sound was battling with Great Aunt Beatrice’s favourite music which was something called opera and the banging Uncle Jeremy was making up on the roof. He enjoyed the mix-up of noises and started to try and make up a little song to go along with them. Out of the window he could see Great Aunt Beatrice and Cyril in deckchairs on the lawn, both fast asleep. They had their heads back and their mouths open. He hoped no flies would fly in.
‘Gabe,’ said his mother, ‘you’v
e got to finish your reading.’
Gabriel liked learning to read, it was his favourite thing to do apart from recreating Ancient Roman battles with Cyril; they used plastic dinosaurs for the Romans and farm animals for the subjugated peoples. That and riding his pony, Fred; Beatrice was teaching him to do rising trot.
‘K is for kangaroo,’ he said. ‘If we made a very strong apron could you put me in the pocket?’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said.
Gabriel put his hand up to touch his mother’s earrings where they were swinging in the breeze. She carefully detached his hand and kissed the top of his head.
‘Can I have earrings when I’m older?’
‘If you want to,’ she said, ‘but I must warn you that getting it done does hurt a lot. They have to put a needle through your ear.’
‘I don’t want them then,’ he said.
‘You are my very best decision,’ she said.
‘I know, you’ve told me that,’ he said, although he wasn’t really sure what it meant. ‘L is for llama.’
‘And love,’ his mother whispered in his ear so that it tickled, ‘and love.’
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Penguin for giving me such a wonderful opportunity and for saying that I was a writer from the beginning.
Thank you to Siena Parker for making the road to publication such an enjoyable experience.
Thank you to my fellow writers from WriteNow 2016/2017. I wish you all the success you deserve.
Thank you to Katy Loftus for mentoring me and teaching me how to plan.
Thank you to my editor Isabel Wall, whose calm and inspiring presence has been so key to me completing this. Her love for the book has made all the difference.
Thank you to my agent Anna Power at Johnson & Alcock for her good sense. If I ever have to go to war, I’m taking her.
Thank you to Gel for helping me to get my confidence back.
Thank you to Frances for reading and for getting me down from mountains.
Thank you to Rachel for many years of shotguns and nighties.
Thank you to my family and especially my parents for their loyalty and bravery. I owe you everything.